Back in January of this year, on my life coaching course, I did an exercise that gave me an opportunity to reflect upon my sense of self and also my dreams. The task was described as 'My Being Metaphor' and it encouraged me to respond to the following 4 statements;
-This describes me.......
-This is what makes me joyful/proud/delighted
-This is when I was really challenged
-This is something you don't know about me.
This describes me.....
I chose a photo of me running a trail race a number of years ago. It demonstrates the freedom that I feel and have felt whilst trail running. I also felt it showed a sense of positive aggression that I sometimes struggle to express in day to day life.
What image helps to describe you? Is there a part of you willing to be seen that does not always have an opportunity to be witnessed? WILDNESS
This is What Makes Me Joyful/Proud/Delighted.....
I chose a robin to represent something that made me joyful and delighted. For me the Robin represents hope. They provide a flash of colour in the depths of winter. It's a reminder for me to keep going and that, even in the depths of my struggles, hope remains. It also keeps me concsious of connecting to the natural world which has an ability to provide solace, joy and a meaningful mirror.
This Is When I Was Really Challenged.....
For this question I chose a picture of me taking cover from the rain somewhere in North Eastern Italy. At this point I'd been on the road running from Stoke to Croatia for well over two months. My end goal of Hvar Island, whilst significantly closer than when I started out, still seemed a long way away. This adventure was sort of an extreme 30th birthday present to my self. It was an adventure purely of my own design. Ultimately, I believe it was the help of others that got me through. My brother in law that came out to meet me half my through, my parents who were always at the end of the phone putting up with my neurotic outbursts, Milan in Croatia who invited me to share a mid afternoon glass of wine with him and the kindness of strangers like him throughout. It was a lesson in the human capacity to keep going through challenging times and the importance of others in maintaining motivation. One of the most important lessons I've learnt from the life coaching course is that maintaining motivation and momentum requires a web of supportive others.
This is something you don't know about me......
The 2018 run to Croatia had been inspired by an experience I had 6 years before whilst spending a significant amount of my summer on Hvar Island, Croatia. Over 3 months of the summer of 2012 I felt a sudden increase in energy, started to struggle to sleep, came up with a number of grandiose business ideas, including setting up a music festival on Hvar, and fell in love a number of times throughout the summer. If you look up medical symptoms of a manic episode my experienced ticked all the boxes.
Upon the end of the summer, my heightened mood quickly dipped. I came to the conclusion that I'd been unwell that summer and went about slowly trying to recover from the subsequent depression. Yet I think over time this medical view felt like it over looked the fact that I had had some useful insights that summer. During those summer months I had had some wonderful connections, felt able to break away from a more reserved and more timed sense of self. Ultimately, it had felt akin to a psychodelic experience.
After the adventure to Croatia in 2018, I discovered a psycho spirtual therepeutic approach called psychosynthesis. For me and in my interpretation, it offered the opportunity to look at my experience in an alternative light. That perhaps those 3 months in Croatia were potentially a spiritual one. I've come to a conclusion that both interpretations can be true; that I was simulanteously unwell to some extent and also experiencing something potentially fruitful and enlightening.
To conclude, I think these questions guide us toward how we bring our energy, our passions and our life lessons to create something in the here and now and the future. I believe that we can do so with a combination of compassion for our selves and others, activitating our will power and our ability to act and create and through working and colloborating with others who might share our interests and vision. I would love to provide a space for you to reflect upon who you are and what dreams lay within you. Through my coaching I will support you in creating a road map for bringing these dreams into reality and to close the gap between who you are and who you have the potential to be.
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